Monday, June 12, 2017

Holy Macron!

"Emmanuel Macron’s takeover of French politics is all but complete" by Sylvie Corbet and John Leicester Associated Press June 11, 2017

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron’s takeover of French politics is all but complete.

The newly elected French leader’s gamble that voters wanted to throw out old faces and try something new is paying off in full — first by giving him the presidency and, on Sunday, the crucial first step toward securing the legislative power to deliver on his pledge of far-reaching change.

As when voters turned the previously unelected Macron into France’s youngest president last month, Sunday’s first round of voting in two-stage legislative elections again brought black eyes to traditional parties.

Having monopolized power for decades, the old parties are being routed by Macron’s political revolution.

His fledgling Republic on the Move — contesting its first-ever election and fielding many candidates with no political experience at all — was on course to deliver him a legislative majority so crushing that Macron’s rivals fretted that the 39-year-old president will be able to govern France almost unopposed for his full five-year term.This is regarding a guy who until recently was an unknown and from a party that was recently created out of thin air by the globalist cabal and the bankers behind them, and now they are sweeping to an unopposed and massive majority?ÇA pue!!!!

Record-low turnout, however, took some shine off the achievement — showing that Macron has limited appeal to many voters.OMG! Everyone else sat out, huh?

Macron intends to set his large and likely pliant cohort of legislators, all of them having pledged allegiance to his program, to work immediately.

He wants, within weeks, to start reforming French labor laws to make hiring and firing easier, and legislate a greater degree of honesty into Parliament, to stanch the steady flow of scandals that over decades have eroded voter trust in the political class.Great! Is that what the French voted for? I thought they voted for Macron to protect those laws from Le Pen, and where did her alleged 40% go? Just threw in the towel, huh?

With 94 percent of votes counted, Macron’s camp was comfortably leading with more than 32 percent — putting it well ahead of all opponents going into the decisive second round of voting next Sunday for the 577 seats in the lower-house National Assembly.He won a third of the vote and it is an unopposed and massive majority? WhoTF wrote this?

Macron’s prime minister, Edouard Philippe, confidently declared Sunday night that the second-round vote would give the assembly a new face. ‘‘France is back,’’ he said.Same old merde though.

Pollsters estimated that Macron’s camp could end up with as many as 450 seats — and that the opposition in Parliament would be fragmented as well as small.Looks like all election in France are fixed. Really going over-the-top on this one.

The Socialist Party that held power in the last legislature and its allies were all but vaporized — their 314 seats probably reduced, according to pollsters’ projections, to as few as 20 seats, and possibly no more than 30, in the new assembly. Projecting seat numbers is an imprecise science in the two-round system.

Socialist Party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis warned that Macron’s party could end up ‘‘almost without any real opposition. We would have a National Assembly with no real power of control and without democratic debate to speak of.’’

On the right, the conservative Republicans were also reeling, projected to end up with possibly no more than 110 seats, and possibly as few as 70, having controlled 215 in the outgoing Parliament.

The National Front of far-right leader Marine Le Pen looked unlikely to convert her strong showing in the presidential election into anything more than a small handful of legislative seats and certainly not enough to make the party into a major opposition force.

That was Le Pen’s hope after she advanced for the first time to the presidential runoff that Macron won May 7.

Le Pen complained that the legislative voting system didn’t fully represent voters’ wishes — because her party got around 14 percent of votes but wasn’t able to greatly improve on the two legislators it had in the last legislature.

The party’s secretary general, Nicolas Bay, warned of Macron getting ‘‘a majority so big that he will have a sort of blank check for the next five years.’’So Le Pen's people just sat it out, huh?So much for the new legitimacy of the National Front.

Another sign of voters’ rejection of the political mainstream was that far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon was, with the Communist Party, projected to see his camp win as many as 18 seats, an improvement on the 10 they held before.....But nothing that will make a difference or matter.

--more--"Awwww, did you see who were holding hands?Related:"U.S. President Donald Trump met his match in a handshake showdown with France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron. At their first meeting, ahead of a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, the two men locked hands for so long that knuckles started turning white. Trump finally seemed ready to pull away — but Macron evidently wasn’t. The French leader held the shake for a few seconds more. Both men’s jaws seemed to clench. Trump has described himself as ‘‘a germ freak’’ and called handshakes ‘‘barbaric.’’ In his 1997 book ‘‘The Art of the Comeback,’’ Trump wrote he’d ‘‘often thought of taking out a series of newspaper ads encouraging the abolishment of the handshake.’’ Trump’s aversion to hand-shaking seemed to lessen over the course of the U.S. presidential campaign. He’s now deep into an inaugural world tour that has forced him to exchange hand greetings with leaders from Israel to the Vatican. Macron won France’s election this month by positioning himself as the anti-Trump, embracing globalization and open borders and quoting philosophers, but as a 39-year-old who has never held elected office, Macron clearly was excited about the appearance with the U.S. president, which cemented his status as a new global player — and as a formidable hand-shaker."(Blog editor shaking head!)

All part of the Great Game.The French result -- voters defecting from the established parties -- contrasts Greatly with the vote in Britain, where they returned to the establishment:

LONDON — Embattled British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed ministers to her shaky government Sunday. Some Conservative colleagues rallied to support her, but others said her political days were numbered after last week’s election.

May’s weakened position in the party ruled out big changes. All the most senior ministers kept their jobs, but May also reappointed an old adversary — Michael Gove, a former rival for the Conservative leadership whom May fired from the Cabinet when she took office last year. The pro-Brexit Gove was appointed environmental secretary.

May shrugged off suggestions her days in Downing Street were numbered. Asked if she is now just a caretaker leader, May noted that ‘‘I said during the election campaign that if elected I would intend to serve a full term,’’ but rumors swirled of plots to oust May.

Former Treasury chief George Osborne — who was fired by May last year — called May a ‘‘dead woman walking,’’ and Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was ready to contest another election at any time.

Many senior Conservatives say May should stay, for now, to provide stability. But few believe she can hang on for more than a few months. ‘‘I think her position is, in the long term, untenable,’’ Conservative lawmaker Anna Soubry told Sky News, but Graham Brady, who chairs the influential 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative lawmakers, said a ‘‘self-indulgent’’ party leadership campaign would only cause more uncertainty.....

"Iran kills coordinator of terrorist attacks as inquiry focuses on Kurds" by Thomas Erdbrink New York Times June 11, 2017

TEHRAN — In a cross-border strike, Iranian intelligence operatives hunted down and killed the coordinator of the terrorist attacks on two landmarks in Tehran last week, a top official said.

The Iranian official, Mahmoud Alavi, the intelligence minister, speaking on state television late Saturday, described the man who was killed as “the mastermind and commander of the team” that carried out the assaults.

The suspect, whose name was not revealed, fled the country after the attacks, Alavi said, and was captured and killed with “the help of intelligence services of allied countries.”

While the minister did not identify the area where the operation took place, his operatives have concentrated their search on the region around the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iran has long had a considerable intelligence presence there, dating to before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and the Iranians cooperate closely with the two dominant political parties that divide power in the Iraqi Kurdish region.

They are not alone.You say the attacks in Tehran originated there, huh?

Iranian investigations into the attack are increasingly focusing on a group of radicalized Iranian Kurds.Gee, who could be radicalizing them?

Sunni extremists have gained a foothold in Iran’s Kurdish areas during the past few years, according to a 2015 research paper by Iran’s Interior Ministry.

The report concluded that the ultraconservative Salafi current in Islam had attracted followers in Iranian Kurdistan and that the Islamic State had “stepped up” efforts to recruit members in the region.

The presence of ultraconservative Sunnis in the region has become much more visible, said Jalal Jalalizadeh, a former member of Parliament from Iranian Kurdistan.$mells like Saudi to me.

Alavi, talking about terrorists in the country, said “many teams” were under surveillance by the Intelligence Ministry. And dozens of people accused of being potential terrorists have been arrested in recent days, some in connection to the attacks Wednesday.

On Sunday, six more people who were said to have direct links to terrorist groups were arrested in Iranian Kurdistan, according to Mizan, a publication of Iran’s judiciary. A safe house in Iranian Kurdistan was also raided, and suicide vests, weapons and bomb-making equipment were found, the Intelligence Ministry reported.....

WASHINGTON — The US military said Sunday that it had carried out a drone strike in southern Somalia against al-Shabab, the Al Qaeda-linked insurgent group — apparently the first such strike since President Trump relaxed targeting rules for counterterrorism operations in that country in March.Just picking up where Obama left off.

The military said the strike targeted a command and logistics portion of an al-Shabab camp. It came after Trump cleared the way for offensive strikes in Somalia without a specific self-defense rationale.

The military said it believed the strike killed eight militants. Military officials said the United States had seen no reports that any civilians were killed.

“The US conducted this operation in coordination with its regional partners as a direct response to al-Shabab actions, including recent attacks on Somali forces,” said Dana W. White, chief Pentagon spokeswoman.

The US attack was carried out by at least one armed Reaper drone flying from a base in Djibouti, a US official said. It dropped multiple Hellfire missiles. The official said more such strikes should be expected now that US and Somali officials have analyzed potential targets that could be attacked using the new authorities Trump approved.Well, we know what blood is on war criminal hands then.

The US Africa Command portrayed the camp as part of a broader al-Shabab stronghold, from which the Islamist group has launched attacks over the past eight months in which it overran three African Union bases for peacekeeping soldiers. The group seized military weapons in those assaults.

The US military has been training African Union and Somali forces in the country.....

In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Miss. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001.)

In 1987, President Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, exhorted Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to ‘‘tear down this wall.’’

In 2007, President George W. Bush went to Capitol Hill, where he prodded rebellious Senate Republicans to help resurrect legislation that could provide eventual citizenship for millions of immigrants without legal status.

In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder fended off Republican demands during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he appoint a special counsel outside of the Justice Department to look into national security leaks.Looking back after the unmasking and I guess you can see why.

Last year, an American-born Muslim opened fire at the Pulse nightclub, a gay establishment in Orlando, Fla., leaving 49 people dead and 53 wounded before being shot dead by police....."

I used to take pride in history, but now I'm just ashamed.You know who is history for the rest of the day, right?

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